Recently J.K. Rowling revealed that she always thought of Dumbledore as gay, and that he had fallen in love with the (eventually) evil wizard Grindelwald as a youth, which partly explains his ideological mistakes made with that wizard. The revelation came when a student asked her if the headmaster who always spoke so highly of the power of love had ever fallen in love himself. I think that this is an opportunity for a wise person to say something about the current debate on homosexuality in culture and church, esp. in the Anglican communion. Unfortunately, I will speaking on the matter instead.
As premodern as Dumbledore appears to us, with his flowing beard and ancient wisdom, we need to see him as the quintessential split subject; but inasmuch as he lives out the victory of love over death, he is the split subject that makes it, that lives not in this world but in the next (where Harry last sees him) and when he was in this world, lived as if in the wound of Christ. There is a picture from Flanders which shows believers bathing in the blood pouring out of Christ’s wound. Then another from Caravaggio which shows Thomas poking his fingers into this wound. We must remember that this wound characterizes not the living body of Christ, but the resurrected body, the spiritual body that lives beyond death. Zizek calls this body un-dead, but this is needlessly shocking. We don’t know much about this body, but we do know that it is neither given or taken in marriage, and that, sexually, it is like an angelic body. But we also know that our spiritual bodies are given us in a wedding feast. So are they sexualized or not? Is the love that grapples with death and wins (like Jacob did) in any way sexual? In some religions, Mormonism as well as Islam come to mind, the afterlife is seen in some ways as like the family life we know here. Heterosexual intercourse is mentioned, encouraged, and it seems that children play a part as well. We cannot say this about our tradition, and yet our language is perhaps the most sexualized, what with marriage feasts, brides and bridegrooms, consummation, etc. So what kind of sex are we talking about? And if the beatific vision is the consummation of all our desires, clearly that includes erotic desire (I don’t think any decent theologian would argue with me here). It is clear that Christians tend to be feminized in regards to Christ, but Christ also takes on something feminine–the slit in his side, that bleeds not monthly but continually. This split of course heals Adam’s wound through which Eve was born, and in gushing both water and wine, found the church and its sacraments (as well as its fantasy in the grail which caught this shower), and I think the picture of the Christians bathing in the blood which flows from this slit are seen to take on the saviour’s new sexual characterics. Which is . . . . what? He is not given or taken in marriage, but he bleeds, he loves, and of course he enjoys, forever, his desire is fulfilled in gazing at God and at uniting with his adopted children.
So is the resurrected body gay, or feminine? We need to be careful here, but we can say that in passing through death this body’s sexual wound has profoundly changed. It is no longer a source of division (etymologically sex means simply division) but a source of unity. The elect are erotically bonded to each other. What all this goes to say is that the sexuality of the Christian is profoundly changed, and I don’t believe this has ever really been considered. What does it mean to be feminized? What does it mean to be erotically bound to each other. What does it mean to be perfect, and yet still to bleed, to be wounded? Homosexuality is an issue now because the gay person is a witness to this. I’m not saying that all Christians would be more honest if they were gay. I’m saying that homosexuality brings the topic to the forefront. Etymologically again, gay of course means happy, but what if we see this person to be happy not because they just bought a killer sweater, but rather because their sex is no longer divided but resurrected? Again, homosexuality brings this question to the place where it can no longer be ignored, which is why, as much as intellectuals hate to dirty their hands in hopelessly dualistic debates on issues “which are not of primary importance (didn’t Rowan Williams say something like this?), it is time to realize that the wise among us (hint, Rowan) need to make this topic their own, and no longer leave it to the hungry ghosts and ravenous dogs of mindless debate.
This is quite an interesting allegorical interpretation of Christ’s bleeding wound–it is on par with the heights of medieval piety, as when they’d suck on the breasts of Mother Jesus, or nuns would kiss Jesus’ foreskin and use it as a wedding ring. But this goes even further, by extending it into the beatific vision and beatific enjoyment. If such a claim is analogical or metaphorical (some sense of which we do not yet know), and yet we will see God ‘face to face’ (at least on the patristic & scholastic schemes) without mediation of some created form, such as foreskins and breasts.
If such a claim …. then positing these ’sexual’ organs as a means by which we see and enjoy God would seem (perhaps?) to posit a created form as a mediator in the beatific vision/enjoyment? I’ve yet to ‘work out’ for myself through adequate amounts of reading how to understand how Christ mediates God to us in the beatific vision/enjoyment…
Random thought:
It’s about intimacy, which can include sexuality, but is not defined by it. Sexuality is a completely earthly thing - intimacy is a heavenly thing.
I think it’s interesting that we feel the need to draw sex and sexuality up into heaven. Marriage metaphors notwithstanding, why should we suppose that it need exist there? It seems fundamentally American to be so preoccupied with this appetite (sex) that we have to sanctify it theologically. e.g. I don’t sit around wondering whether I’m going to be a vegetarian in my resurrected body or not. I guess this means I’m not a decent theologian, but I don’t agree that “the elect are erotically bonded” to one another. Thoughts?
A very good complaint. Maybe von Balthasar on Eros would help us here, where Eros is about yearning, not sex. I think it is important to retain a sense of eros in heaven, for it both gives us a feeling that we will always move closer to and deeper with God, as well as communicating the bodily joy inherent in this quest. We will be resurrected bodies, not ghosts and we will “taste and see” that the Lord is good. True our sexuality will be unrecognizable from the vantage point of this mortal coil, and our dietary habits will probably not fall into either carnivorous or vegetarian, though they might fall under body and blood. And it is not just that sex and eating are “images” or “symbols” of incorporation. I would rather say they are forays into the real, under which our sex and our eating are pale reflections.
Thanks, that’s helpful. It’s good to keep perspective on yearning/intimacy vs. sex/acts.
stratkey mentioned: “It seems fundamentally American to be so preoccupied with this appetite (sex) that we have to sanctify it theologically.”
Aron’s response was great. But (of course) I want to ask about the metaphysics of this “appetite”? Why is it that materialistic America is so obsessed with sex? Isn’t it because the body, like nature, has been spiritual from the beginning? (The Jewish tradition is right about the becoming-one-flesh.) If people are running after it, it’s because there is something deeply good there. Something that can be and is distorted and made into a destruction.
This whole “yearning/intimacy vs sex/acts” — as well as the tensions between the feminine and masculine parts of ourselves — is explored in a beautiful film called “The Slaughter Rule.” Has anyone seen it? (It has the advantage of being set in my home state of Montana, too.) Ryan Gosling and David Morse play a kid who’s cut from his football team and loses his Dad in the same week and is very vulnerable — and a lonely older man who becomes his coach for “six man football,” played out among the ranches and on the “rez.” (It’s the real Montana!)
I’ve watched this amazing film three times and I’ve seen it differently each time. It is unquestionably a film about love and about trust. And it helps me realize how profoundly confused we ALL are about the nature of love when it is between men (in this case), or between an adult and an adolescent, and about homosexuality and about sex vs intimacy.
In the end, this amazing film maybe speaks to Aron’s initial question, perhaps: “Does it matter if Dumbledore is gay?” Because after the third viewing I was asking myself, why did it ever seem to matter to me whether or not this boy’s coach is gay? I was so afraid of sexual predation. But the difference between predatory self-gratification and a genuine love with boundaries has nothing to do with the sexual orientation of the adult and the adolescent. It has to do with trustworthiness and the strength to have capacity for love. It has to do with yearning and intimacy.
If you view this film, be sure to look at the deleted scenes too.